WOMAN IN ART
phatically sketching trips. She has made her reputation as a painter of mountains and portraits, and as she enjoyed life amid various scenes, a variety of subjects perforce are portrayed in her art. Even today Mrs. Bradley paints with the same freshness and enthusiasm as in her girlhood. She was one of the few women whose work was passed upon and accepted by the general jury at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893.
It is human nature to be silent about many things, but most reticent concerning its spiritual nature,—the hungers and experiences that are the religious workings of the soul are seldom mentioned. Our spirit-self is unseen save as man is known by his works. A man may carry a strong love and faith, and a big burden of experiences that would weigh him down save for his love and faith, but he is silent. Another fact: you cannot give out what you have not received.
Artists study and paint the subjects they are drawn to, that they enjoy most, that are akin to their nature. It may be landscape or flowers, the nude or portraits, still-life genre or marine, each and all give great variety, and therein does modern art differ greatly from that of mediaeval and renaissance periods.
We recall but one living artist who paints scriptural or religious subjects exclusively, and he paints them with feeling.[1]
Not many years ago a Boston gallery exhibited a collection of paintings by Miss Mary L. Macumber. There was an unusual spirit dominating that entire room. There was an interesting variety of canvases each with a psychic message: "Memory Comforting Sorrow,"—a woman with abundant dark hair falling over her shoulders, is pressing "the flowers of yesterday" to her bosom; "Mona Rosa" presents a beautiful oval face, a sweet face, yet with a touch of sadness.
Mary Macumber surely has her individuality not only of subject but of treatment, of infusing the material with the immateriality of spirit, and making it felt. Here is a telling talent for allegory and symbolism. There has been rather a distinct change in her choice and expression of subjects in recent years, owing perhaps to being further removed in time from the influence of England's pre-Raphaelites, whose work she, as a younger woman, admired greatly, especially the poetic interpretations of Rossetti and the color schemes of Burne-Jones.
One of the first of Miss Macumber's paintings seen by the writer was
- ↑ O. H. Tanner
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